It’s important to teach children to create strong passwords, and to remind them that passwords mustn’t be shared with anyone, not even best friends.

Many children choose passwords that are personal and that are easy for both friends and strangers to guess, such as names of football teams or pets. These passwords are easily abused by others who might want revenge or to fool around, for example on Internet profiles and MSN. Children and youth also experience that others abuse passwords to steal things they have built up in computer games and maybe even paid for.

A strong password is a word that is as difficult as possible to guess because it looks like a set of random characters. By following these simple guidelines it becomes easier to create a strong and safe password:

Keys to password strength:

• An ideal password is long and it’s wise to combine letters, numbers and symbols, and to mix upper and lower case letters. The greater the variety of symbols used, the stronger the password. A password should include at least 8 characters, but 14 characters or more is best.

• Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often.

• Don’t use the same password everywhere. It’s important to use different passwords on different systems and web pages. Then you won’t have to change password everywhere if it is revealed in one place.

• Change your passwords regularly. A strong password will be safe for a longer period of time. A password shorter than 8 characters is considered to be safe for about a week. A password of 14 characters or more may be safe for several years.

5 steps to create a strong password:

• Think of a sentence that is easy to remember, but difficult to guess. For example: “My son Fred is three years old.”

• Check if you can use this sentence as a password unaltered. If it is accepted with spaces between the words by the system or web page, then use it.

• If you can’t use the sentence as a password, then make a password out of it. One way you can do this is to use the first letter of each word to make a new word that appears to be gibberish. Using the sentence above, this new word will be “msfityo”.

• Make the password more difficult to guess by mixing upper and lower case letters. One way to do this is by making all the letters in the first half of the alphabet uppercase. You can also add numbers that are meaningful to you. In this case adding the number 3 before the t (three), the number 1 in the end (he is the first born son). As a result, the new password will be “MsFI3tyo1”.

• Add punctuation and symbols for length and complexity. The possibilities are many, you may use symbols that look like letters, punctuation in the beginning or end of the password, or other methods. For example: “!M$F13tyo1”.

Avoid creating passwords using:

• Sequences or repeated characters. “12345678”, “22222222”, “abcdefgh” and letters placed next to each other on the keyboard.

• Dictionary words in any language are vulnerable.

• Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations.

• Avoid using only symbols and numbers that look like letters. Criminals will not be fooled by an i being replaced by 1 or an a with @.

• Personal information, such as your name, birthday, passport number, or similar information.

Check your password:
At http://www.microsoft.com/uk/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx you can test your password and read more about how you can make password phrases that are easy to remember, but difficult for others to guess.

Source:
Microsoft

Video Clip:

How to choose a safe password? This informational video clip contains useful information on how to create a strong password.

Just press the play button at the top of the right hand column to watch the clip.